Sometimes I have most clearly seen the whole tragedy of Job in a waking
dream, the whole passing before me in twilight shadows, losing itself
in thick darkness, reappearing in light like the dawn--always changing,
always solemn, always instructive; a thing that surely happened, because
a thing now happening in all the substance of its eternal meaning.
Is it a pillar grand in height, and finished all over with the dainty
care of an artist whose life has been spent in learning and applying the
art of color?
How stately! How Heaven seeking because Heaven worthy! While I admire, I
wonder religiously.
I see the hosts of darkness gathering around the erstwhile flashing
capital, and resting over it like midnight sevenfold in blackness; then
the lightning gleams from the center of the gloom, then the fire-bolt
flies forth and smites the coronal once so glorious, and dashes it in hot
dust to the Earth, and the tall stalk--so upright, so delicate, so like a
well-trained life--reels, totters and falls in an infinite crash!
Is it true?
Every word of it. True now--may be true in thee and me, O man, so assured
of stability and immovableness. There is danger in high places. Is
there a Spirit which hates all noble-mindedness and seeks to level the
spiritual pile with mean things? Evil Spirit! The very Devil--hating all
goodness because hating God!
But stop.
After all, who smote the pillar? Whose lightning was used to overthrow
the fair masonry?
O God of gods, the devil’s Creator and Master, without whom Satan could
not be, nor hell, nor trees forbidden, nor blast of death--O Mystery of
Being--what can our souls say in their groaning? And how, through anguish
so intolerable, can they pray?
I am afraid to build, because the higher the tower the more deadly the
fall. Dost Thou watch our rising towers and delight to rain Thy fires on
them, lest our pride should abound and our damnation be aggravated by
our vanity?
And God’s own Book it is that tells the good man’s pains, and that
revels in swelling rhetoric over the rottenness and despair of the man
who feared God and eschewed evil! And what unguided hands--if hands
unguided--set the tale of wrong and woe and sorrow next to the very
Psalter? Is not the irony immoral, because cruel? Or is there meaning in
all this?
Is it Life’s story down to the very letter and jot of reality? How better
to come out of the valley than to the harping and song of musicians who
have known the way of the Almighty and tasted the counsels of Heaven?
Cheer thee, O poor soul! Thou art today miserable as Job, but tomorrow
thou mayest dance to the music of David. Tomorrow thou mayest have a harp
of thine own.
A tree of the Lord’s right hand planting arises loftily and broadly in
the warm air. Birds twitter and sing as they flit through its warp and
woof of light and shade. It is a tree whose leaves might heal the nations.
What sudden wind makes it writhe? What Spirit torments every branch and
leaf? What Demon yells in triumph as the firm trunk splits and falls in
twain? Was it grown for such a fate as this?
Better if the seed had been crushed and thrown into the fire than that it
should have been thus reared and perfected and then put to shame among
the trees of the field.
Who can give speech to this flood as it plunges from rock to rock in the
black night time? Hush! There is a man’s voice in the infinite storm:
“Let the day perish in which I was born! Let it be darkness; let that
night be joyless, let no song enter into it; let them who curse the day
stigmatize it who are ready to stir up the leviathan. Why died I not
from the womb? Then had I lain down and been quiet; I had slept; … there
the wicked cease from troubling, and there the wearied mighty rest;
the prisoners sweetly repose together, they hear not the voice of the
exactor, and the slave is free from his lord.”
These are human words, but are they not too strong, too rhetorical, to be
true?
No! For who can mechanize the rhetoric of woe?
“Why is life given to the miserable, and to one who would be blithe to
find a grave? I have no quiet, no repose, for trouble on trouble came,
and my sighs gush out like waters long dammed back.”
No doubt the rhetoric is lofty, yet with a strange familiarity it touches
with happy expressiveness all that is most vivid in our remembrance of
woe.
“I loathe my life. I will give loose to my complaint. I will speak in the
bitterness of my soul. To God I will say: ‘Condemn me not. Show me why
Thou contendest with me. As the clay Thou hast fashioned me, and to dust
Thou causest me to return. Thou hast poured me as milk and compacted me
as cheese. As a fierce lion Thou huntest me; then Thou turnest again and
showest Thyself marvelous.’”
Job has found fit words for all mourning souls. So they borrow of him
when their own words fail like a stream which the Sun has dried up. What
woe the poor little heart can feel! Herein is its greatness. It is, in
its own way, as the heart of God.
“Truly, now, He hath worn me out. Thou hast made all my household
desolate, and Thou hast shriveled me up. God giveth me up to the ungodly,
and flingeth me over into the hands of the wicked. He seized me by the
throat and shook me. He breacheth me with breach on breach. He rusheth on
me like a man of war.”
In what good man’s sick chamber is not Job welcome? Welcome because he
can utter the whole gamut of human woe. He can find words for the heart
that is ill at ease, and prayers for lips which have been chilled and
silenced by unbelief. His woe belongs to the whole world. All other woe
is as the dripping of an icicle compared with the rush of stormy waters.
In the case of Job the internal is proved to be greater than the
external. When the trials came one after another like shocks of thunder,
“in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”
But did he speak? That is the point. If he did not, perhaps he was dazed.
He felt a tremendous blow on the forehead, and he reeled, and was not in
a condition to bear witness about the matter. If he said any thing, let
us know what he did say. Could he speak in that tremendous crisis?
Yes, he spoke. His words are before us. Like a wise man, he went back to
first principles. He said:
“Circumstances are nothing; they are temporary arrangements. The man
is not what he has, but what he is. I do not hold my life in my hands,
saying ‘It weighs so much,’ and count up to a high number.”
Job went back to first principles--back to elementary truths. He said:
“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither
[that is, as I began]. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away [as He
had a right to do; I had nothing of my own]. Blessed be the name of the
Lord.”
Could Job look over the ages that have been healed and comforted by his
example--stimulated to bear the ills of this life by the grateful memory
of his invincible patience--surely, even now, in Heaven, he would be
taking the reward of his long-continued and noble endurance of the divine
visitation.
It may be so with you, poor man or woman. You do not get all the sweet
now. This shall be a memory to you in Heaven, long ages hence. The
wrestling you have now may minister to you high delight, keen enjoyment
and rapture pure and abiding. Who can tell when God’s rewards end? Who
will venture to say: “This is the measure of His benediction?”
God is able to give and to do abundantly beyond all that we ask or think.
Should any one inquire of you as to your compensation, say: “It is given
by instalments--today and tomorrow, in death; in the resurrection, all
through the ages of eternity. Ask me thousands of ages hence, and I will
reply to your question concerning compensation.”
Life is not limited by the cradle and the tomb, and it is not between
these two mean and near points that great questions are to be discussed
or determined.
Job has been read by countless readers. His was, of course, a public
trial--a tragedy that was wrought out for the benefit of multitudes in
all generations. Nevertheless, it is literally and pathetically true that
every man, even the most obscure, has his readers--fewer in number, it
may be, but equally earnest in attention.
Think you that your children are not taking notice of you--seeing how you
bear your temptations, difficulties and anxieties?
Think you not that your eldest boy is kept away from the table of the
Lord because you are as atheistic in sorrow as ever Voltaire was?
Do you know that your daughter hates the church because her pious father
is only pious in the three Summer months of the year? He curls under the
cold and biting wind as much as any Atheist ever did. Therefore, the
girl says: “He is a sham and a hypocrite--my father in the flesh, but no
relative of mine in the spirit.”
You have your readers. The little Bible of your life is read in your
kitchen, in your parlor, in your shop and in your warehouse; and if you
do not bear your trials, anxieties and difficulties with a Christian
chivalry and heroism, what is there but mockery on Earth and gloating in
hell?
May God give us grace to bear chastisement nobly and serenely; bless us
with the peace which passeth understanding--with the quietness kindred to
the calm of God; help us when death is in the house, when poverty is on
the hearth-stone.
When there is a storm blinding the only poor little window we have, let
us say: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. If I perish I will
pray, and perish only here.” That is Christianity--not some clever
chatter and able controversy about metaphysical points; but noble temper,
high behavior, faultless constancy and an invincible fortitude in the
hour of trial and in the agony of pain.